The Line
by Naheka and Joe the Nazgul
Summary: It is often said that there is a line between reality and fantasy. The truth is that there is indeed a line. However, there are some settlements that are actually made on that very line. Here is one of them: FFNH campus for FanFiction.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own The Lord of the Rings. It belongs to J.R.R. Tolkien.  
  


* * *

**Author's Note:**  
This... is the sequel to one of my greatest fanfiction novels, The File Cabinet. You may want to read that selection first before going onto this one, although it is quite long. I'm doing my best to re-create this world without confusing the readers too much. And if it so happens that I do confuse everyone... well, I tried not to. Have a nice read!  
  
-Naheka  
  


* * *

  
_  
Everything,_  
_Can be expected,_  
_In the mind._  
_Everything,_  
_Can be thought of,_  
_In the mind._  
_But nothing,_  
_Can manifest thoughts,_  
_As well,_  
_As a File Cabinet._  
  
~*~  
  
I was eleven years old when _The Fellowship of the Ring_ came out into theaters. I was eleven years old when I did not bother to read The Fellowship of the Ring and skipped ahead to _The Two Towers_. I was eleven years old when I wrote my first _Lord of the Rings_ fanfiction piece. I was eleven years old when I wrote my first Mary-Sue.  
  
The dark violet sky was bedecked with stars, fading from the yellow lights of the late commotion on campus. These quarters never slept. They were always busy and active, full of life, like an everlasting Saturday night at the Green Dragon. It was easy to glimpse the faint glow of the party, and the sound of blissful hymns towards the west. The world of Fanfiction was a new world in its entirety. What was written was real, and what was written was once a thought. And here I sat in the dim moonlight atop a hill in the east court, living the thoughts and dreams of myself and of the people of this world.  
  
It has been about three years since the day I first saw _The Fellowship of the Ring_. The third and final film of the _Trilogy_ was released into theaters a month ago. Since late December, I had seen it thrice. I chuckled over my mug of warm milk, recalling how my best friend and I had dressed up as Ringwraiths to watch _The Two Towers_ on opening day. How the children stared and how the mothers placed their marble hands on their shoulders and said that there was nothing to fear.   
How by said day I was consumed with hatred for Legolas, although three years ago he was a shadow and a dream which I loved. I was a young fool who recklessly plunged into terrible situations without thought.  
  
Clear air was a wonderful thing. Something hard to find when during times of blackened sky... but in my mind the darkness was compressing. The night was immaculate and the mantra of the light below was as cheery as ever. These were times of great joy and of great prayer. Joy for the coming of the final tide, prayer for the decrease of Mary-Sues and their wild creators. Three years ago I was part of the army that brought pain to this campus. And today I am of the army that sits against it. I once stood against it, as the warrior does against his foe, but in literature, nothing ever really dies. For as long as it is written... it is real.   
  
...And then I spilled my hot milk on my jeans, and it hurt really bad and made a mess, so I had to run and clean it up.  
  
That's the normal agenda for me as a writer at Fan Fiction dot Net Headquarters. Contemplate, then spill something on yourself. Wonderful.  
  
---  
  
Legolas Greenleaf was a single, handsome elf lad who decided to go out riding in the bright Mirkwood sun one morning. It was a midsummer's dawn, and thus quite humid, persuading the elf prince to mount his bare-back horse without garbs for his torso. Little did he know that this would be the day that his very life would change forever by a marvelous surprise he'd find--  
  
"_Stop!_ _Stop! __Stop_!" I flung my arms furiously in the air. "Are you _daft,_ woman? What is _wrong_ with you?"  
  
A dark haired adolescent girl cowered in the corner of the office. She must have sensed that I was rather angry, judging by the fact that I was beginning to talk in the accent I picked up from too many views of _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. "Where in God's name did you get an idea like this?"  
  
"It's a simple, generic one," she said quickly. "Everyone does it, so I thought it wouldn't do any harm to just practice it--"  
  
"Mary-Sues are bloody illegal in this office!" I roared. "Don't ever practice it unless you're aiming to bash it!"  
  
"What is it with you and Mary-Sues?" asked the girl immediately. "They're just stories! Make believe stuff."  
  
There was silence. I glared down at my apprentice writer, who blinked benignly up at me. The tranquil rustle of pale blue curtains seemed loud amidst our stares. Sunlight seemed to have low saturation as it steadily poured through the safety-glass windows. Was the dust that hid beneath books and papers laughing also? Suddenly, there was a crinkling. A grinding of metal versus metal. It creaked and scraped and rasped for several minutes, getting louder with every sound it made. Then, there was the groan of the door opening at its brass hinges. There was a Nazgul, tall and dark, with a menacing aura that had no trace of living breath.   
  
The Nazgul also stood quietly in the doorway. And then...  
  
"You've been arguing again, haven't you?" said the Ringwraith dully.  
  
"Of course we've been arguing!"   
  
I stormed towards a wall with a large screen glass above a complicated-looking dashboard -- called the _Fiction Dome_, birthplace to the writings of all Fanfiction Authors. Beside them was a series of outlets, two of which were occupied by a round cartridge and a flat cartridge. Both were yanked out immediately with my trembling hands. Soon, my apprentice's collar was under my grip and I was dragging her out of the door way. "We'll be back in an hour. Make sure the OCs get their lunch so that they don't raid the cafeteria again." Joe nodded and gave a quick salute before disappearing with a slam of the mahogany brown door.   
  
The turquoise carpet of the office hallways went by in a blur as my companion and I rushed away to the common centers.  
  
"Apprentice!"  
  
"Sindaavarwen."  
  
"Cindy. Yeah, whatever."  
  
"I have a screen-name and it's Sindaavarwen."  
  
I stopped suddenly at the corner of the hall. "If you don't stop writing Sues with my Dome, I'm going to call you Bob. Or Smith. Smithy, if you prefer."  
  
"You _Pirates_ freak!" Sindaavarwen retorted. "Aaah!"  
  
Our pace quickened again as I sprinted through the halls, through the swinging glass doors, and burst out into the bright sunlight of a Thursday morning. Right in front of me was a familiar, pleasant sight. It was long, tall, silver, green, and white, standing proudly in the warm rays. It was a corner-sign that read, "Pineapple Street". Last year it was Pine Street. Then the wrecking ball came. Now, it's Pineapple Street. Joe hates Pineapples.  
  
The road was full with the commute of other authors, mostly ladies between the ages of eight and twenty something. The preteens traveledin groups. The older ones walked alone with a solemn look in their eyes, watching the young ones as if they would suddenly trick an alarm that would make the ground explode. Sinda and I continued to run. The bus stop was almost in front of us. As of now the road was occupied by a stampeding herd of Wargs, carrying an assortment of characters dressed in everything from black to pink polka-dots. Authors formally rreceiveda bus as a mode of transportation, but the original characters, whose lives were immortal out of stories unless his or her creator decided otherwise, got a new way of moving every week. For example, the other Wednesday there were horses. The following Tuesday, a mighty river came rushing down the road and carried its burdens to random destinations.  
  
The bus was a tropical bright orange and came in a flash. No smoke trailed from its rear and no hum came from its engines. It stopped quietly in front of us, waiting for more passengers to aboard. Sindaavarwen and I boarded swiftly through the lately opened tinted doorway. Then the doors were shut and the bus flew off with a gunshot bang towards a formal location, down the road and far ahead towards the rising sun.  
  
---  
  
"Next!"  
  
Ms. Fiddlespork's purple glasses nearly toppled off her wrinkled, square-shaped nose as she slammed a large red stamp down onto a registration paper. The lines to rent Canon Characters were long and loud, just as they usually were. With the recent opening of The Return of the King, the line was extra long. Sinda waited in the back of the room while I stepped up to the counter with the tinted, smudged windows, behind which the crotchety old check-in-lady slumped and wheezed in her chair.   
  
"Good morning Ms. Fiddlespork," I said timidly. "I came in to return these Can--"  
  
"Aren't you that girl with the Sue hanging around you?" interrupted the old bat. "You had better watch your back, or she'll Sue you!" She laughed riotously, banging her thick hand on the desk. "Actually, I think she's already gotten to ya'!" I nodded nervously in reply, digging in my pocket to retrieve the two cartridges. "You have the Nazgul, right?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am." I pushed the items across the desk towards her large, hunched figure.   
  
"And the two Mary-Sues and 'Stues that you came up with over the summer?"  
  
"Their ailment was deliberate, Ms."  
  
"They're going to get you when you least expect it, child," she growled. Suddenly, her long nails gleamed in the lights of the room as her great hands rose and snatched the cartridges towards her. Her heavy arms flew backwards. The flat one went into a bin labeled, "LAND" and the round one flew into another entitled, "CHARACTER, CANON - MOVIE"  
  
"Out you go, you Sue-condemned scum!" she screeched. "Polluting and killing us all with your sparkles and perfection! Next!"  
  
I quickly edged away from the front desk and grabbed Sinda by the wrist again. She was happily flipping through a magazine that read 'Middle-Earth Man'. "Let's get out of here," I seethed, "_now_."  
  
---  
  
While we were eating lunch, a telephone fell out of the sky and started ringing. I shrieked and kicked it into the bushes.  
  
"It's from that last story that you wrote," said Sinda through a mouthful of salad. "A long recall from several months ago, when we first met." I nodded, eyeing the bushes suspiciously as I picked up a pair of chopsticks to eat my lunch. "Everything about it has made you totally paranoid. I think you said a telephone rang and a Mary-Sue was on the other side."  
  
"Right on target," I replied, waving my chopsticks at her. "Don't trust phones that come out of nowhere.... Or dogs that smile," I added as an afterthought.  
  
Sindaavarwen nodded. Then she looked at my hands. "Why are you eating your salad with chopsticks?"  
  
I grinned cheerfully. "Don't you think it's cool?"   
  
"No, it's weird."  
  
"I think it's cool."  
  
"You're weird."  
  
"Why, thank you."  
  
If FFNH was a normal campus, it would ring a bell tone and then a chime once at one o' clock. Instead, there was a deep horn, much like the horn at Helm's Deep. It blew a short victory tune, then sounded shortly for one beat. This was the signal for the first hour after midday. Sinda and I rose from our seats and turned to our left to toss our trash into the bin just next to the bushes. I casually tossed my plate and eating utensils in, but as Sinda made to do the same, she screamed and dropped her trash on the ground.  
  
I whipped around. "Eh? What's the--" I stopped in mid sentence and gasped, for I had seen it, too.   
  
There was a pair of eyes looking out at us from the darkness of the garbage can.  



End file.
